Increasing levels of brutality don't portend well for a nation

What is worrying for psychologists is the latest trend in which many ordinary people are supporting or participating in public violence

- Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist.

In 2021, Prof. Thomas Blom Hansen, an anthropologist at Stanford University, wrote in his book "The Law of Force: The Violent Heart of Indian Polities' that more and more Indians are tacitly endorsing or actively participating in public violence and that this pathology has moved to the centre stage of public life.

His assessment seems to have been borne out of the public killing of farmer Ramswaroop Dhakad in Guna district last week. He was mercilessly beaten in the village of Ganeshpura in the Guna district of Madhya Pradesh by a local BJP leader, Mahendra Nagar, his sons, his wife, his elder brother and other relatives. There are conflicting reports about what led to this murder. One report states that Dhakad had reportedly taken a financial loan from Nagar against a collateral of six bighas of his land located in the adjoining Baran district of Rajasthan. With prices of land having shot up, he wanted the legal documents returned to him, but Nagar refused. The other version is that Nagar, a small-time BJP leader, has a history of grabbing land belonging to farmers and is known to have forced 25 farmers to 'sell' their land at dirt-cheap rates,